Thursday, July 2, 2009

As activists in this country continue to lobby the White House and state legislators to act upon a series of LGBT-specific proposals and bills, a court in Delhi has ruled gay sex is not a criminal offense.

This landmark decision strikes down a colonial-era law that described sexual acts between people of the same-sex as an "unnatural offense." Under the previous law, those convicted under the statute could have faced 10 years in prison.

Activists who gathered inside the court to hear the decision reportedly wept.

"It [the ruling] is India's Stonewall," Indian activist Aditya Bandopadhyay told the BBC. "We are elated. I think what now happens is that a lot of our fundamental rights and civic rights which were denied to us can now be reclaimed by us."